pollution | THE BLACK LADDER

By Dr. Samori Swygert

We are being marked for deαth. Currently, we are engaged in a nutritional, chemical, and environmental war on our bodies. As consumers we are targeted by profit driven competitors in the food industry. This is the battle of WEALTH vs HEALTH! I highly encourage you to read this top to bottom and share with friends and family.

The quality and source of our food supply is being compromised by environmental pollutants that result from oil spills (BP, Exxon), nuclear radiation leaks (Fukushima Reactor), Fracking (hydraulic fracturing), by products of industrial manufacturing, and other environmental manipulation.

Furthermore, our dietary consumption has become inundated with steroids, antibiotics, pesticides, and genetically modified organisms (GMO). The food industry, FDA, and Biotech industry has morphed into an almost clandestine triad with fraternity like partnerships. Each component supports the others at the ignorance of the consumer.

Our babies, children, and ourselves are consuming food that has been adulterated with artificial sweeteners, preservatives, dyes, additives and other ingredients. When you read the ingredients of a food product, it almost sounds like you are reading the back label of a hair care product. We then wonder why we are experiencing and witnessing such high rates of cancer, endocrine disorders, and cardiovascular disease.

Let’s Get Specific

The availability and accessibility to grocery stores with an adequate supply of nutritious and organic produce at affordable prices are sparse to scarce in low income communities. However, a ubiquitous and ever-present covenant of fast-food chains are standard fixtures in middle to low income communities. The usual suspects (KFC, McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Popeye’s, Pizza Hut, and etc), can all be found within a 1 mile radius of each other in low income landscapes. The main menu items are processed foods that are loaded with salt, sugar, fat, cholesterol, and cooked in grease. However, their products are strategically formulated, tested, and streamlined to the desirability of our taste buds.

You may be dismissive of this, but I encourage you to think of the cumulative amount of diseases and ailments over time. Individuals in middle to low income communities with fast-food chains in close proximity to their homes have a high incidence rate of strokes, heart attacks, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, high cholesterol, kidney disease, and obesity.

The Veil of Secrecy

It has become fashionable for companies and governmental agencies to say, “we are about transparency now”! Our health institutions encourage us to always, “know your status“, “be informed”, “get tested”, “ask your doctor”, but their actions are paradoxical. The FDA, congress, and food industry has yielded and pandered to biotech firm money.

These firms have lobbied, and encouraged the suppression of labeling GMO based foods. This removes the ability of the consumer to make an independent, well informed decision about their health. The FDA says that GMO foods are safe for consumption, but has yet to furnish any long-term study results to substantiate their position. How can you say these products are safe, and you have no 5, 10, 20 years studies on humans that consumed GMO over an extended period of observation?

Some of the biotech and fast-food companies use food industry sponsored researchers to conduct studies, and this introduces biased results that are skewed in favor of the companies. This type of research also leads to the censoring of negative results.

Members of congress quietly allowed passage of the Monsanto Protection Act into legislation. Why are they conducting policy and operations in such a clandestine, insidious, and surreptitious manner? WHERE IS THE TRANSPARENCY THAT YOU PROMISE? If you will not afford the public the opportunity to make informed dietary choices, and indirectly force these foods on us by not labeling them, then we all need free health insurance for life! We don’t know what the long term effects will be, and we should not have to pay a dime for any ailment linked to these foods in the future.

Real Talk!

To my Muslim and Jewish readers, are you aware that the citrus industry is in the process of making GMO oranges, and they are going to either use the genes from spinach or the pig to modify the orange? Will they be transparent about this on the labeling? The engineers believe that splicing these pig genes into the current genome of oranges will help combat the Citrus Psyllid disease that has ravaged the Florida Orange Groves.

To my seafood lovers, a company named Aqua Bounty is in the process of gaining approval from the FDA to market and sell genetically engineered Salmon. Furthermore, Fracking spill-off in a Kentucky stream has killed off a whole line of fish according to a U.S. Geological Survey and Fish /Wildlife Services.

To my sweet toothr’s and diabetics, high amounts of sugar, corn syrup, and fructose load our sodas, soft drinks, milkshakes, and candy. Are you aware that research has found that the main energy source for the growth of cancerous tumors is glucose? The growth of cancer malignancies may be linked to excessive sugar intake in our diets.

To my water lovers, we must be conscious at all times. We are in a climate when a prescription is generated for anything. There has been a surge in the diagnosis, and prescriptions for ADHD medication in our children. However, are you aware that the consumption of lead, even in small amounts, manifests the exact same symptoms of ADHD. It is quite possible that lead paint, and plumbing that our children drink and bathe in can be causing ADHD symptoms, but our children are just victims of a toxic and polluted environment.

To my chicken and fried rice lovers, Arsenic has been found in vast amounts of rice supplies and the chicken line of our poultry chain. The FDA and other food regulatory agencies choose to take a cavalier dismissive approach about the levels in the food. I would like people to remember that these are chemicals and should not be present. It would only be right to try and downplay the issues to avoid public hysteria, and massive amounts of litigation in court cases. Arsenic is a cancer causing agent.

This will conclude Part 1 of Life and Deαth in the Tongue. I will post part 2 later this week. I will illuminate more environmental and corporate assaults on our health and how others are profiting off our planned misfortune and disinformation. Until then, be safe, and choose to be healthy, God Bless!

By: Dr. Samori Swygert

This week I wrote a post detailing the various ways in which our health is under attack by profit driven corporations. I encourage you to read part 1. Let’s jump right into the final part.

What’s at stake/or at “steak”?

Two pharmaceutical classes of drugs are being introduced into our dietary consumption (antibiotics and hormones). The regulation appears to be insufficient. Have you noticed the recurrent meat recalls? Do you question the logistics behind the cause?

Think of all the farms that raise cattle, hogs, chicken, and etc. These are just farmers, they are not doctors! However, farmers are dosing our meat supply with antibiotics. As a healthcare practitioner, I understand how diseases are assessed, and how antibiotics are prescribed. A patient will enter the hospital, and may receive a prophylactic dose of antibiotics (ABX). However, if the patient is fully admitted, the M.D. will order blοod and sputum cultures to find out what specific infection the patient has, and what drugs the organism is susceptible or resistant to.

Does each farm in the United States have an onsite veterinarian that assesses each and every animal, and prescribe the appropriate drug for each specific infection? The answer is no! Nationally, we have farmers untrained in the medical field that may be giving animals inappropriate drugs for infections.

August 2013, NPR did an interview with doctors from the University of Minnesota, and researchers at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Kansas State University.¹They confirmed that there is overuse of antibiotics with no true oversight. They revealed that the FDA only releases an annual report of how many types of antibiotics are sold to animal farms. However, that doesn’t reveal how much is used, or if the drugs are given at the right dose per animal, or if it is for the right infection. Imagine being given Penicillin to treat HIV! This is contributing to drug resistant bacteria in our food supply.

The researchers said the agricultural and pharmaceutical industry don’t think this is causing harm to humans. Well, in July 2013 there was 50,000 pounds of beef recalled due to E. Coli contamination by National Beef Packing Company, and this same company recalled 23,000 pounds of beef in June 2013 for E. Coli contamination.²

Furthermore, the beef industry has been adding a pharmaceutical class of drugs to beef called, Beta-Agonists. This drug is used in humans to treat asthma, but in cattle it’s shown to add 15-30 pounds of beef in the last phase of fattening (~3 weeks). However, Guy Loneragan, a professor of food safety and public health at Texas Tech University, revealed data at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association proving that the cattle receiving this drug are dying faster than the cattle that weren’t .³The drug maker, Merck, still thinks that the drug is safe.

Too Chicken to talk about this!

Just a few days ago, Foster Farms has come under tremendous scrutiny because 300 people in 17 states got sick from a multidrug resistant strain of Salmonella bacteria. Three of their processing plants are under investigation, and being evaluated by the CDC. However, according to an article by Consumer Reports, the company expressed that the chicken should just be cooked well, and they have not officially declared a recall!⁴

You’re not “slick”!

NPR published an article in August 2013, which detailed how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has allowed oil companies to dump their oil waste in the Wind River of on an Indian Reservation in Wyoming.⁵A tribal leader, Wes Martel, had a legitimate point. He basically pondered the legitimacy of this, because this runoff goes into the drinking water, land irrigation, cattle feed, and aquatic wildlife of their reservation. Rob Jackson, a professor of environmental science at Duke University, assessed the situation and revealed that this runoff is contaminated. The samples he evaluated contained metals, radioactive elements like radium, and benzene. He also stated that the levels have been “150 times of that allowed for drinking water”.⁵

Tying it all together!

Corporate industries have very little regard for our heαlth, and are willing to cμt corners, cheat, cover-up, and deceive us just to get a buck! We are being victimized by a cabal of industries, and it all starts from our taste buds! I believe 7 industries are profiteering from our taste buds.

Prolonged consumption of fast-food or contaminated food will eventually result in hospitalization. This will occur by food poisoning, heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, or cholesterol. The Kaiser foundation stated that the average hospital admission costs up to $14,662, and up to $27,100 for surgical admissions.⁶ The food industry gets their cμt first, then the healthcare industry gets a c*t due to hospitalization (diagnostics, admissions, surgeries). Next, the doctor prescribes medication, and thus the pharmaceutical industry gets a c*t. Let’s not forget the pharmaceutical industry gets paid twice from the antibiotics and hormones they sell to farmers! The insurance industry then gets a cμt, because we become a high risk policy holder due to our diseases. They then sell us high insurance premiums. The diet and fitness industry then takes a cμt, because we must have a lifestyle change. This lifestyle change makes billions from Atkins, South Beach, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Slim Fast and etc. The fitness component gets a cμt through the latest workout DVDs like: P90x, Hip Hop abs, Insanity, Tae-Bo, or even fitness equipment like the Ab-Roller, Total Gym, or Nordic Track. The clothing industry gets a c*t by selling the sneakers, sweat suits, fitness apparel, and even the new wardrobe as our weight fluctuates. Lastly, the TV industry makes off like a fat rat, because it costs millions just to have a 90 second commercial or infomercial.

Lastly, don’t be fooled when certain government agencies and biotech companies tell you that certain foods are okay and safe. Think for yourself and be logical. Watch this YouTube link about Camel Cigarettes from 60 years ago, and see how they had doctors telling us smoking was okay and preferred by them. YouTube link

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